Coca Leaf Extracts
- Completely Safe for Consumers

Coca Leaf Extracts and Cacao

Using extracts of coca leaf will require that people daily consume micrograms of water-insoluble coca alkaloid, if they want to daily consume multi-grams of sugar-free, mostly fat-free chocolate. Will this be safe for consumers? YES!

LD50 (Lethal Dose 50 - how much of something you can give to rats before half of them die) is a standard measure of the safety of a food additive. In 1982, pharmacists at the Univ. of Mississippi measured the LD50 for coca tea (the dehydrated form used in KukaXoco chocolate) - "Comparative lethality of coca [leaf] and cocaine". The pharmacists determined that coca tea is safer than most other chemicals injected into your foods, as shown in the following table. If you are comfortable putting salt and vanilla in the foods you eat, you will be more comfortable using micrograms of coca alkaloid. Items highlighted below are current additives in chocolate.

Coca Chewing is Harmless.
In countries such as Bolivia and Peru, the two cultural, consumer, uses of the coca leaf are coca tea and coca chewing. Coca chewing actually leads to more absorption of coca alkaloid than coca tea (but still not enough to get the euphoric high of kohkcayn - native coca alkaloid is much boring). In the 1990s, the World Health Organization did a study of coca chewing and kohkcayn use. With regards to coca chewing, here are their conclusions:

Only recommendation of the WHO report for simple coca? "The Program on Substance Abuse and the World Health Organization should undertake a study of the nutritional and therapeutic advantages of the coca leaves."

(I apologize to the WHO for taking 20 years to fulfill their request.) Basically, there is no social and bodily harm when chewing the coca leaf. Thus making the drinking or using of coca tea even more harmless (what's less than zero, other than global interest rates?). Combine this with multiple studies in the last 100 years, and the conclusion is that the consumption of coca tea (and thus the use of coca tea extracts) poses no consumer risk whatsoever.

It will be a complete waste of money (i.e., thousands of dollars) to buy tons of our chocolate to isolate grams of coca alkaloid to later produce (at even more cost) dollars-worth of cocaine. The availability of our cacao-coca mixture does not for allow practical conversion (a legitimate concern of law enforcement authorities, which we share). Unlike legalized narcotics such as oxycontin and hydrocone, our use of coca alkaloid will not lead, in any way, to increased use of any drug, while helping reduce consumption of one of the world's most addictive, deadly drugs - sugar.

A lot more information on the history, culture, and safety of the coca leaf is available at our sister Web site: www.cienciadelacoca.org.